Colossians 2:19 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Colossians 2:19

Comments

They are out of touch with Christ, these heretics; they have never been truly converted. They do not know him. ‘From which all the body,’ the true church, ‘by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God.’ As soon as you are drawn aside by the heretics who do not have Christ, you lose touch with the constant growth and blessing that comes from him.Why were the Colossians exposed to this heresy? Why does Paul say that if you do things right, you are increased with the increase of God? Well, because the people in Colossae were probably thinking along these lines: We love Christ, we believe in him but there are so few of us here in this town. Why, there are tens of thousands of people in this place and there are only at most a few hundred of us and people look down upon us. If there were more of us, if we could see more saved, if we could get a greater crowd, if we could run into thousands, what a great thing that would be. And there would be more security for us because if there were more of us (some may have thought like this), why they would not throw us out of our jobs and our professional guilds because we don’t go along to the idol feasts and things like that; if only there could be more of us.‘And not holding the Head.’ They have not retained their exclusive, tenacious hold on Jesus Christ. They are not exclusively obeying the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, resting in him, trusting in him. I trust him, we say, for salvation. You don’t worship angels; the Bible forbids it and several times in the book of Revelation. He only is the Saviour. I trust him and his word to teach me what the church should look like, how I should worship. I trust him to teach me the rules of the Christian life and exclusively him. If somebody comes along like the late John Wimber and says, ‘Oh, but I’ve had all these visions. This is what we should be doing.’ We say, ‘No.’ Jesus Christ the Lord and his published Word is the only authority for us.

Application

Well, we think like that too and that’s very natural. You long to see the old days back, when there were far more churches; you long to see the warehouses turning back into churches, in the reverse direction from what has happened over the years, to see great crowds in congregations; of course we do. Now, that makes us vulnerable to certain false teachers because that is what happened here, that the false teachers came along and they said, ‘Well, you want the crowds, we can do it. We know how to do it; we know how to get your numbers up in a dramatic, spectacular way. We can do that.’ Yes, they could possibly do it because what they were offering appealed to the fleshly thinking. You can get massive crowds if you do what people want you to do. Stop talking about sin for a start, stop talking about salvation, bring in the rock bands, do whatever the people want, let them have fun, clubs. Take away the hard parts – the need for repentance and forgiveness and conversion, why, then of course you will get more people in but it won’t be a church and this is the kind of thing that is happening here.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Colossians 2:19 Commentary and Bible Study